RaveThe New Statesman (UK)Tells the history of a Soviet society largely without protest, without violent repression, without dramatic events, and without sudden economic shifts ... Smith builds up, through short sentences and character sketches, a picture of an entire culture, a way of life ... The density of information in the book means speculation and theorisation are avoided ... Late Soviet life was made as predictable as possible, partly in reaction to Stalinism ... It is certainly not Smith’s intention, but one can imagine some, especially young, readers finding this all rather seductive ... But Exit Stalin also forces the question: would you accept the price? The intellectuals in the psychiatric hospitals? The killings on the border?
Eric Klinenberg
MixedThe Guardian\"Klinenberg... has written a paean to libraries, parks, playgrounds and other public spaces, but he is unable to keep the bleaker realities of urban (and, unusually, suburban) life out of his would-be-inspiring \'Aren’t Cities great?\' narrative. What are clearly meant to be instructive just-so stories and heartwarming anecdotes are often much more grim and upsetting than he seems to think they are ... The flaws of the book come out in a discussion of another of these apparently public \'infrastructures\'... This leads us to the question of ownership, and places where this book won’t go – harder measures, such as nationalisation, that could keep social infrastructure social, and keep public spaces public ... [Klinenberg] asks, rightly, why no tech billionaire has ever done for “the people” what Carnegie did with his libraries.\
